University Provost Honored

David Campbell is recognized for his contributions to physics

University Provost David Campbell has been recognized by the American Physical Society (APS) for his outstanding contribution to physics.

The APS announced last week that Campbell will be awarded the 2010 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize at a special ceremonial session during the annual APS meeting next March in Portland, Ore. He is being honored “for pioneering new approaches to the study of complex systems, using the complementary approaches of nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics, and for communicating the excitement of this new field to diverse audiences,” according to the APS citation.

Campbell shares the $10,000 prize with Shlomo Havlin, a professor of physics at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. The prize was established in 1988 by Beatrice Lilienfeld in memory of her husband, Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld.

Campbell, also a College of Engineering professor of electrical engineering and College of Arts & Sciences professor of physics, came to BU in 2000 as dean of ENG. Previously, he was professor and head of the physics department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and director of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Campbell earned a B.A. in chemistry and physics at Harvard University and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and applied mathematics at Cambridge University.